49ers Bye Week: So Uninspiring You Probably Didn’t Notice We Weren’t Playing

What the fuck do I even say?  What even is there?  It’s not as if our team has just been beleaguered by injuries (*hands Beastmode a tissue for his tears) or some other catastrophic accident, our lackluster season has been the culmination of systemic and repetitive organizational ambivalence and ineptitude.  This abysmal season makes us long for those 2004’s Dennis Erickson days of continuous disillusionment where the bad was tangible.  When you stop and take a look at your team’s worst seasons and you realize that a midseason review of the present out performs all previous shitshows, it is definitely time to start entertaining thoughts about starting an enormous red & gold bonfire in the backyard… except I live in the North Bay and we have become very, very touchy about flammability as of late.

Well franchise fans, this atrocity of a season may suffer from a paucity of wins, but it has been a record-breaker of a year for us.  Setting a new and hitherto unnecessary NFL record, for FIVE consecutive games the Niner Nation got to be reminded of the cancer that is hope by losing by 3 points or less.  No matter how much I tried to drown that little voice inside of me like a baby falling into a half-filled 5-gallon bucket, every single time, there was a of me that couldn’t keep from saying, “we could just pull this off” and then swiftly and violently reminded, “Oh wait, no. You are a Niners fan.  Winning’s not what you do, silly thing.”

But that is just our national shame!  There are plenty of letdowns in franchise history, too!  We proved that we are at our most unyielding to go winless this year until McAdoo carelessly dashed our hopes by breaking our longest losing streak from a season opener.

So not everything is bad.  At least not super bad.  DeForest Buckner is proving to be a delightful DT and also just a fairly nice dude.  Jimmy Garoppolo probably isn’t the worst thing that we could do—it’s not as if we are fantastic at our draft acquisitions anyway.  Eric Reid has been a reliable strong safety thus far.  The problem is that nothing has stood out this year in our performance so it is hard to get even the limpest enthusiasm for this team right now.   Joe Staley has been rightly described as a cornerstone of the team and if he can manage to keep his knee—and most recently his eye—in working order he will continue to be.  CJ Beathard, aside from having a fantastical name, had a fairly auspicious inaugural game, which given team decision track records means he will never be seen on the field again.  I like him.  I think he can learn well from Garoppolo.   Only time shall tell if that pipedream bears any fruit.

The problem is that we are in desperate need of so much more than just a competent trigger man, that I am not even sure where the cancer is metastasizing from.  My opinion of Jed York is vacillates on him between impotent to meddling toxicity, but I am not sure that he is a problem.  John Lynch is, well, there, I guess.  The Shandy is tolerable and aside from thinking Hoyer wasn’t the worst idea (other than some Tebow time) he hasn’t irked me to the bone.  It is tough to really point to a critical weakness in the design.  It’s a relationship with a great girl, who is cute, and shares a lot of your interests, and things could be really great between you if she could just try wearing literally anything other than leggings or do something without posting it to Instagram.  No matter how hot she is or how compatible you might be in a number of areas, there is just something fundamentally in the bone that tells you it’s just not going to work.  She’s just…. well… basic.

I apologize for being so unenthusiastic in this preview, but the truth is, that is about on par for our season.  Blasé and uninspired.  If there were a mood ring worn for each team, our colour would most definitely be beige.  Aside from Week 7 against the ‘Boys, the games have been kinda watchable.  The team kinda has some hodgepodge of relative talent that seem to be good in fits and starts and just never gets a flow together.  We put up points every week and there are always just enough plays that you can cut together a highlight real, but he team only manages to sputter to life momentarily like Speed Buggy and then returns to tepid mediocrity.

With a little QB injection coming off a bye week, the rest of the season could offer hope to be slightly less shitty, but even then, “less shitty” comes from a place of optimism bred out of loyalty.  If I’m being honest, I think that our single, lonely win will be all we take this season and 2017 will make our record books for the worst since our inception.  A little bleak, I know.  But to end on a positive note, finding the Niners in the power ranking listing has been much, much easier this season because you just start off by mashing the Page Down button, find the Browns, and look up one slot.

Three cheers to our next postseason appearance in what I am estimating (generously) to be the 2020 season!